With the advent and explosion of the Internet, a number of technologies that facilitate the interchange of data have become widely utilized. One of these technologies, extensible markup language (“XML”), has become a foundational building block which makes possible a wide variety of different types of document processing and exchange. For instance, XML can be used to encapsulate any kind of structured information in order to pass the information between computing systems that would otherwise be unable to communicate.
In order to facilitate the creation and editing of documents containing XML, and other markup languages, software tools have been created or adapted to provide XML editing features. In particular, some word processing applications (“word processors”) have been adapted to allow an XML schema to be attached to a word processing document. Once the XML schema has been attached, XML tags may be added to the data contained in the word processing document. Although features for adding and editing XML to word processing documents have been added to some word processors, the user experience for utilizing these features and editing a document containing XML could be improved.
One reason previous interfaces for editing documents containing XML have been less than satisfactory stems from the fact that many users are not familiar with XML and, in fact, have no desire or need to understand XML. For instance, a word processing document form may be created for use within a corporation that employees are required to complete. The data contained on the form may include, for instance, an employee's home address and telephone number. The address and telephone number may be tagged with XML that identifies the data as such. If the tags are displayed to an employee that is not familiar with XML, the employee may be confused and have difficulty completing the form. However, if the tags are not displayed to the employee when completing the form, the employee may type the information outside of the tags, thereby rendering the XML meaningless.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.